>> Monday, February 17, 2014

It's a big, scary day over here, so I'm just popping in to give you guys a quick recipe I made over the weekend. As I mentioned last week, I'm trying my best to save desserts and booze for special occasions and the weekends. Well, reason to indulge came sooner than I thought with Valentine's Day, so I tried making a treat that was both rich and, at least somewhat, nutritive.

* For this recipe, I used homemade pulsed rolled oats (GF from Bob's Red Mill) for flour, but store-bought almond meal/flour. You could also pulse raw almonds for your own almond meal at home. Consistency will vary depending on store-bought/homemade, so add a little at a time for best results.

Method . . .

Cream together the Earth Balance, water, coconut sugar, and vanilla extract until fluffy.

Then mix in the flours and salt. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Scoop by heaping tablespoonful onto a plate or wax paper and then refrigerate.

Note: You can add more/less of the flour to achieve your desired consistency. Oat flour tends to soak up more moisture as time goes on, so keep that in mind.

// INDULGE?

I entered this recipe into MyFitnessPal and divided it into 12 servings (12 heaping tablespoons) and came out to around 110 calories per cookie dough ball. 10 grams of carbs, 7 grams of fat, 2 grams of protein, 49 mg of salt, and 5 grams of sugar. Now, compared to the cookie dough I used to make, it's not that different calorically.

However, it's lower in carbs, higher in nutrition and healthy fats, and has much less of a glycemic spike than it would with refined sugar and white flour. I could definitely do myself a huge favor and just stop eating sugar altogether, but I know the all or nothing approach doesn't work well for me. So, I'll focus on the gradual instead -- on portion sizes and adding in good stuff, like almond meal -- which is a fat-fighting food, where I can.

So, there's this question of indulging.
Not specifically in these treats, because I've already eaten many, but in general.

Though I don't appreciate Anthony Bourdain's disdain toward vegetarians and vegans, I do enjoy his writing, and recently came across this quote: "Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” -- As much as I try to eat healthfully and cut out "bad" stuff, I continually strive to strike a balance between enjoyment of my favorite foods and better health from the rest. Sometimes the two overlap, sometimes not.